Syfy developing John Scalzi's Old Man's War books into future-set military series

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For its next potential original series, Syfy is looking to one of John Scalzi’s Hugo-nominated space war series for inspiration. Get ready to join the Ghost Brigades.

The network has put a series adaptation of Scalzi’s novel Ghost Brigades, based on the five-part Old Man’s War book collection, into active development. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series will follow 75-year-old John Perry, who enlists in the Colonial Defense Force to help fight “a centuries-long war for man's expansion into the cosmos.”

But Perry’s consciousness will be transplanted into a younger body so he can better survive the conditions in space and the rigors of war. The story will follow Perry as he arrives in the Force and finds himself involved with a mysterious woman and deep conspiracy surrounding the elite fighting squad the Ghost Brigades.

With its militaristic space setting, this series definitely has potential to fill that Battlestar Galactica-sized hole in our hearts.

Fingers crossed. Wolfgang Petersen (The NeverEnding Story) is overseeing development along with Scott Stuber (Safe House). Jake Thornton and Ben Lustig (Winter's Knight) are signed on to write the first script. Ghost Brigades is the title of the second book, published in 2006, which followed 2005's Old Man’s War. The series continued with The Last Colony (2007), Zoe's Tale (2008) and The Human Division (2013).

Before series development ramped up, the book had been optioned as a film with Petersen directing a script written by David Self (Road to Perdition). That project never made it out of development.